


wherever you are and wherever you go (there's always gonna be some light)

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 11:03:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8399260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: AU where Penny and Sheldon are Formula One drivers with very different approaches to how racing should work.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weasleytook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleytook/gifts).



> For Lisa by Lisa with thanks to Lisa; this story would really have been impossible without the help of Lisa. Lisa, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> eta: ahahaha, now I know who I was actually writing for this author's note is actually semi-true! marvellous!

Penny lives for the speed of the race, the pure exhilaration of being the fastest, watching the checkered flags wave as she blows by them. 

She got her first speeding ticket at fifteen. Well, she would have, if she hadn’t been pushing her dad’s old truck so fast down a back road given a number for a name that the cab seemed fit to rattle apart, that the cop never saw the flash of blonde hair behind the wheel. Wyatt never could bring himself to scold his little girl, to dissuade her from flying on wheels, but the fine came out of her next few diner paychecks. 

Right now, watching the flames, she wishes things were as simple now as they were back then. When she could drive without it being so overcomplicated. When it was just about the speed, and not about—about— 

The point  _is_ , Sheldon is a stupid competitive idiot. 

(So is Penny.) 

 

Sheldon didn’t learn to drive until he was twenty. 

“Well,” Leonard says, his voice distant through the ringing in Sheldon’s ears, ”we were mostly right.” Howard and Raj murmur—or possibly shout, who can tell?—similar sentiments. 

Sheldon knows that, in the grand scheme of things, they’re—all right, they’re not wrong. In the grand scheme of things, there are a lot more disasters that could have happened. For one thing, he’s upright, mostly unscorched, and if he does wind up with tinnitus he can ignore Leslie saying she told him so. 

Not that Leslie’s the woman whose opinion concerns him right now. 

(He won’t look at Penny. He  _won’t_.) 

* * *

_One year earlier_  

 

Bernadette nudges Penny with her elbow. Penny spills a bunch of oil everywhere and swears. 

“Do you know that guy?” 

“That’s Sheldon Cooper, Bernadette,” Amy says patiently. ”He’s the one we’re here to beat, remember?” 

“No-oooo, the short one in his pit crew.” 

“Which short one?” 

“The one not wiping oil off his glasses.” 

Penny, trying to wipe oil off the fanbelt—Bernadette has the  _worst_  timing, honestly—says, ”That’s Howard,” without looking up. ”The sleazy one.” 

“To put it mildly,” Leslie adds. ”Talking to him is like talking to a grease stain.” 

Bernadette sounds dubious. ”Are you sure? He looks cute.” 

“He kisses like a Hoover.” Leslie hands Penny a clean cloth, which Penny promptly makes dirty as she backs away from the engine. ”And he fucks like a—God, I don’t even want to remember it to try and form an analogy.” 

“Leslie, we all know you only have sex to relieve physical tension.” Amy slings her arm briefly around Leslie’s waist and Leslie rests her head against Amy’s for a second before they separate. ”Bernadette, on the other hand, might be seeking to form a more permanent pair-bonding. I’m given to understand those can lead to an alteration in one’s partner’s behavior, colloquially known as ’training that bullshit out of him’.” 

“‘Permanent pair-bonding?’ I just said he was  _cute_.” 

Penny shields her eyes against the sun, looking across the black heat-shimmering track at Cooper and his pit crew. Nerds, one and all, not that she can say any differently of her own team. Well. Saving Zach. Zach, who’s capable of yanking a tyre off solo faster than anyone else she knows of and tossing it aside to get the new one in place in seconds. He’d hold the car up with one hand while he did it, too, if he had to. 

Fortunately he doesn’t though; Amy’s libido probably couldn’t take it. 

She has other assistants as well: mechanics who buzz around the pit stall like bees around a flower. But Amy, Bernie, Leslie, and Zach? They’re her  _crew_. 

 

Sheldon calculates the angle of exit from Penny’s pit stall, a little resentful of her slightly superior position. Still, he’s well placed to  _enter_  the pits when it’s time, which—he checks his watch—is rather sooner than he’d like. 

“Sheldon?” 

“Leave him alone, Howard, he’s having his pre-race panic attack.” 

“It’s not a panic attack, Leonard, I can still breathe.” Sheldon looks over at Penny’s pit stall again. He’s not sure what to think of a woman driver, much less one who has played up her femininity by painting little bright flowers all over her car. Where it’s not plastered with manufacturer’s advertisements, that is. 

Howard’s intent on getting his attention. ”Sheldon, who’s the blonde woman you’re staring at? Because I believe I saw her first.” 

“You know that’s the Speed Demon,” Raj says. ”Penny. Pretty Penny.” 

“Not her, the one with the glasses,” Howard says. ”Wearing what I must say is a very fetching jumpsuit.” 

“Did you really have to say it?” Raj, attuned to Sheldon’s disgruntled noises, hands Sheldon a bottle of hand sanitizer. The hand sanitizer fights a losing battle with the grease under Sheldon’s fingernails. 

“He’s right. Wolowitz, you’re meant to be here to assist me, not to ogle unobtainable women.” Sheldon sees another member of Penny’s pit team. ”Well, mostly unobtainable women. I do recall that you’ve been in the unenviable position of the receiving end of Leslie Winkle’s sex drive.” 

“Come on, that’s not fair,” Leonard says. ”I’ve slept with her too.” 

“You’re only making my case for me, Leonard.” 

“What’s your problem, anyway?” Leonard follows Sheldon’s line of sight and sighs. ”You’ve been looking over there once every two minutes for the last half an hour.” 

Sheldon doesn’t correct him on the frequency of his glances toward the other pit stall. ”I’m merely curious about the competition.” 

Howard snorts. ”Yeah, right. Why aren’t you looking at anyone else, then?” 

For this, Sheldon has no reply. 

 

The qualifying lap to determine their places on the grid is, in Sheldon’s opinion, an unmitigated disaster. 

“This is  _not_  like your spot on the couch, Sheldon!” Leonard’s all but yelling at him, and when Sheldon is sitting in the car Leonard, for once, has the advantage of height. ”You can’t go and demand Penny’s spot on the grid!” 

“I beg to differ,” says Sheldon, exiting the car and stalking across the bitumen, pulling his helmet off as he goes. 

 

Penny cocks her head as he approaches. ”Please tell me he’s not coming over here,” she says rhetorically. 

“Dumbass,” Leslie greets Sheldon cheerfully. ”You know you’re not even remotely supposed to be over here?” 

Sheldon ignores Leslie, meets Penny’s eyes. ”I have a proposition.” 

At least he looks slightly less like a horrifying insect with the helmet under his arm instead of on his head, his ruffled hair charming in a way. Penny resists the urge to check if her own hair looks okay; she knows it’s falling out of its ponytail. 

“Go on,” she says. 

Sheldon tells her. 

Amy’s the first to start laughing. It spreads to Bernadette and then Leslie and, before Penny can open her mouth to tell Sheldon what she thinks of the notion of trading grid positions (it starts with ”n” and ends with ”o fucking way”), he’s turns his back on them and is walking away, his stilted gait bringing insects back to mind. 

 

“I take it she said no,” Leonard says. 

“We need to start recalculations immediately,” Sheldon says, which is more of an answer than  _yes_  or  _no_  would have been. 

 

In the end it doesn’t matter. Penny comes sixth, hurling herself out of the car after the final lap and going straight to the nearest bar, waving off the media before they can start comparing her to Lella Lombardi. 

Sheldon comes seventh and immediately starts planning for the next season, yelling at Leonard when Leonard ventures the idea of also going for some time out before putting their brains back to work. 

“This is hardly unprecedented placing, Sheldon!” Leonard finally yells. 

“It’s unacceptable!” 

“I think he’s just pissed off that he was beaten by a girl,” Raj says. 

“That has nothing to do with it!” 

“When you can  _talk_  to girls, Raj, you can pick on Sheldon about them.” 

“No, he can’t,” Sheldon says. 

“Oh, for—Sheldon, will you take your damn helmet off, I promise you that breathing in ’race air’ isn’t going to improve your physics.” Leonard reaches over and yanks Sheldon’s helmet off, releasing the smell of sweaty hair and a decidedly furious glare from Sheldon. 

* * *

Over the next twelve months, Penny goes to Australia to compete there. She does rather well, and posts pictures to her social media posing with her crew and a squad of koalas. 

Sheldon is almost equally jealous about her driving and her koalas. 

Wherever she goes there are messages about her racing waiting on social media—Amy’s department, her combination of social ineptitude and bluntness shutting most people up—but Penny catches enough to know that people are still deeply concerned about her driving abilities as a woman. Sometimes the concern even seems to be genuine. Mostly it’s people—okay, _dudebros_ —complaining about a woman! in! their! sport! 

She has no intention of going back to the kitchen—or rather, the diner—now. 

Sheldon drives in France, in Belgium, in Germany. Howard’s limited language skills get a workout, mostly apologizing for Sheldon’s even more limited social skills. 

He gets nothing but praise. His dedication and unwavering logic. His ability to take advantage of every physical aspect of any course. His hometown advantage, even if Circuit of the Americas isn’t exactly in Galveston. His favorite is being called the Spock of racing, and he unbends enough to give a Spock salute at one interview.

Sometimes, when they’re at the same place—a competion, a function, any meeting of the race-minded where they personally aren’t competing—they don’t quite talk to each other. 

Both pit crews get used to hearing their respective drivers griping about each other. 

 

“Penny thinks Sheldon’s too uptight to unwind enough and react to changes in his perfect plans,” Bernadette Skypes to Howard. 

 _Sheldon says if Penny doesn’t get her head out of the clouds she’ll never do better than sixth_ , Leonard messages Leslie on Facebook.  

 _Rajesh, I refuse to believe that your selective mutism around women extends to Twitter DMs. Now tell me whether you’re at all amenable to informing Sheldon that Penny thinks he has a stick up his ass. A biological impossibility for a race driver, but she refuses to tell him herself. Amy._  

 _I can’t tell him that, Amy, he makes scary noises whenever someone mentions Penny’s name._  

 _Penny says better her head in the clouds than up her ass like SOME PEOPLE._  

“Yeah, well, he’ll get over it,” Howard says. “So, hey, have you ever tried phone sex?” 

* * *

_ Now _

They both qualify again the following year. There’s no question of not qualifying. Sheldon’s meticulous attention to velocity and acceleration and angles and turning curves gets him in. For Penny it’s just speed and fearlessness. 

“You know, even if she beats you again, it’s not the worst thing that could happen,” Howard says. 

Sheldon pointedly ignores him. Surely the tiny bright daisies speckling Penny’s car are non-regulation in some way. 

“You could crash,” Raj says. 

“He could  _die_ ,” Leonard says, glaring at the other two. “We need to stay focused. If something goes wrong, it could as easily be our fault as a result of his stupid grudge.” 

“You really mean that?” Howard asks. 

“No, of course not. He’ll miss a corner because he’s too busy glaring and muttering about chrysanthemums.” 

“Those are  _daisies_. Chrysanthemums are more difficult to both paint and spell than  _daisies_.”

 

“Why does he keep staring over here and mouthing flower names?” 

Penny flicks a spark plug with one battered fingernail, optimistically painted with Butterfly Yellow and chipped exactly three minutes later. ”Because he’s nuts, why else?” 

“I could go and ask,” Bernadette offers. 

Amy shakes her head. “Technically that would be consorting with the enemy.” 

“Technically she’s already consorting with the enemy by dating Howard,” Leslie says. 

“Please stop,” Penny says, burying her head under the driver’s seat in an attempt to muffle their voices, and finding three quarters and a wrapped tampon. By the time she’s retrieved them and resurfaced the conversation has moved on to the ideal grid positions.

Penny knows that it doesn’t matter. That she’s just got to fly, and keep on flying. 

 

Sheldon gets his preferred grid position, thank God—Leonard doesn’t want to drag him back by the collar. 

Penny just settles into her car, letting it close around her like a hug, and doesn’t look over at any of the other drivers, but _especially_ not at Sheldon.  

Nor does she look at the last text message on her phone, which says _While your recklessness remains inexplicably charming, I would_ _still_ _prefer it if you don’t die today_.

Sheldon reaches into his pocket and touches the fuzzy head of the tiny stuffed koala. 

 

The crash—

The crash happens through nobody’s fault at all, although blame gets flung about by literally everyone, perhaps especially people who know nothing of it except for the Instagram shot of Penny afterward, red-faced and sweaty and dirty. Those people fancy themselves the real experts.

All it is, is that the steering goes mushy in Penny’s hands. She starts skidding. Tries to turn into the skid. The steering gives up the ghost entirely. All she can do from there on out is try to decelerate as quickly and, yes, _safely_ as possible. 

 _At least there’s not a grandstand_ , she thinks at the end, trying to ball herself up. _At least there’s not peo_ — 

She crashes, and the chorus of screams that follows her down into the dark is all in her own voice. 

 

Sheldon whips around the corner, sees the car with its whimsical daisies barreling out of control off the track, and yanks on the wheel, going into a controlled skid. His car has barely stopped before he’s out and running. There’s an alarming amount of smoke pouring out of Penny’s car, but all he has eyes for is the flash of blonde hair that always stubbornly escapes Penny’s helmet. 

He’s six feet away when the fireball goes up. 

Penny’s moving, scrambling out of her harness, gloved fingers working herself free with the expertise of a thousand test scenarios. Sheldon reaches down and she accepts his hand out, both of them getting away from the flames but not without feeling the horrible intensity of the heat and the nearness of—of what might have been. Then the gush of foam hitting them both as the fire crew arrives takes some of the heat away. 

The second dull  _whoomph_  as Sheldon’s car goes up is almost an afterthought. Sheldon’s hand tightens on Penny’s for a moment, but that’s all. 

She manages her helmet off with her free hand. They’re still close enough that the radiant heat is unpleasantly warm,  but she shovels a handful of foam off her torso and smears it on her face. Beside her, Sheldon does the same, his helmet bouncing to the ground beside hers. 

“I  _told_  you I didn’t want you to die today,” he says. 

“I didn’t expect you to back it up to this extent,” Penny says, gesturing at his flaming car. 

“Then what  _did_  you expect?” 

“That you’d keep driving.” 

He gives her a look of barely veiled impatience. “Penny. That would have been illogical.” 

She doesn’t question him any further, as their pit crews come running. 

 

“Well,” Leonard says, “we were mostly right.” 

“Yeah. You could’ve died. You didn’t.” Howard glares at him. “You also could’ve kept going.” 

Sheldon and Penny are still holding hands, like a final conciliatory handshake over the flaming ruins of their respective racing careers. The constant scream of the other cars has stopped, the wreckage of their cars too much of a danger to allow the race to continue until they are cleared. Until torn and twisted, blackened metal is removed from the track. Hundreds of hours of work and engineering and precision, all gone. They’ll never know what went wrong.

“Are you all right, bestie?” Amy has her phone out, lifting it to catch a picture of Penny, backlit by the flames, covered in ash and foam. Hashtag nofilter. It won’t need it, a glory of red and white and black. “What do you want me to tell people?” 

Sheldon lets Penny’s hand slip free of his as she turns to tell her crew she’s okay, as he turns to tell his crew he’s perfectly all right. He won’t look at her. He  _won’t_. He strips off his gloves, stuffs them in his helmet, and hands the lot to Raj. He wants a cool drink and for people to stop asking him if he’s all right. 

Penny plays up to the camera for Amy, brushes off the medics, and catches up to Sheldon just as he detaches from the entanglement of fire crew, medics, pit crews, and the encroaching media. 

She doesn’t say anything about him having either a stick or his head up his ass as her hand slips into his again, their fingers entwining this time. 

He doesn’t say anything to her about being a reckless speed demon as he squeezes her hand in return.


End file.
